His real name was Dhanpat Rai but he is better known by his pen name Premchand or Munshi Premchand. He has been read and studied both in India and abroad as one of the greatest writers of the century. Premchand's literary career started as a freelancer in Urdu. In his early short stories he depicted the patriotic upsurge that was sweeping the land in the first decade of the 19th century. In 1914, Premchand started writing in Hindi. Premchand was the first Hindi author to introduce realism in his writings. He pioneered the new art form of fiction with a social purpose. He wrote of the life around him and made his readers aware of the problems of the urban middle-class and the country's villages. He supplemented Gandhiji's work in the political and social fields by adopting his revolutionary ideas as themes for his literary writings. Besides being a great novelist, Premchand was also a social reformer and thinker.